Talk:Audience

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Off-topic and non-notable quotations[edit]

  • At the outbreak of war in 1939, the power of the feature film, as a means of communication and persuasion rather than just a vehicle for entertainment, was already well established. One of the earliest programmes of study into the effects of the moving image upon the mind had been carried out by the Payne Fund between 1929 and 1932. The experiments that it carried out concentrated on such issues as the extent to which children learnt from film and how well they retained what they learnt; the possibility that exposure to film affected attitudes; and how moral standards might be affected by what was viewed. The findings of these studies showed that the human mind could be shaped and moulded by persons in positions of influence; and, in this context, the film maker was in an almost unique position of influence.
  • In 1939 the BBFC still operated under the broad guiding principles of former President TP O’Connor’s list of ‘grounds for deletion’ which were first published in 1916. These essentially barred:
    * References to controversial politics
    * Relations of capital and labour
    * Scenes tending to disparage public characters and institutions
    * Realistic horrors of warfare
    * Scenes and incidents calculated to afford information to the enemy
    * Incidents having a tendency to disparage our Allies
    * Scenes holding up the King’s uniform to contempt or ridicule
    * The exploitation of tragic incidents of the war
    The aim of all these constraints was to try and ensure that the kinds of films that came out during this period dealt with war in ways that were unlikely to be particularly upsetting or challenging for audiences.
  • Phil saw television as a marvelous teaching tool. There would be no excuse of illiteracy. Parents could learn along with their children. News and sporting events could be seen as they were happening. Symphonies would mean more when one could see the musicians as they played, and movies would be seen in our own living rooms. He said there would be a time when we would be able to see and learn about people in other lands. If we understood them better, differences could be settled around conference tables, without going to war.
  • If children will read comics [...] isn't it advisable to give them some constructive comics to read? [...] The wish to be super strong is a healthy wish, a vital compelling, power-producing desire. The more the Superman-Wonder Woman picture stories build this inner compulsion by stimulating the child's natural longing to battle and overcome obstacles, particularly evil ones, the better the better chance your child has for self-advancement in the world. Certainly there can be no argument about the advisability of strengthening the fundamental human desire, too often buried beneath stultifying divertissments and disguises, to see god overcome evil.
    • William Moulton Marston, "Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics", The American Scholar, 13.1 (1943): p 40, as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, pp. 9-10; in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn, as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.9; in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn,
  • Comics they say are not literature – adventure strips lack artistic form, mental substance, and emotional appeal to any but the most moronic of minds. Can it be that 100,000,000 Americans are morons?
    • William Moulton Marston, "Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics", p. 35-44.
  • The picture story fantasy cuts loose the hampering debris of art and artifice and touches the tender spots of universal human desires and aspirations. 'Comics speak, without qualm or sophistication to the innermost ears of the wishful self.
    • William Moulton Marston, "Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics", The American Scholar, 13.1 (1943): pp 35-44. as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.9; in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn,
  • Not even the church is so powerfully equipped to serve the public psychologically as is the motion picture company.
    • William Moulton Marston in Henry W. Levy, "Professor to Cure Scenarios with Wrong Emotional Content: Dabbled in Movies While at Harvard; Now Sought By Hollywood with Offer of Favorable Contract", New York University News January 1929; as quoted in Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014), p. 137.
  • What you, the reader, would most enjoy at this very instant cannot be determined by any universal formula. It is in a peculiar sense a historical problem, as well as a biological one. What you would now like to do, to have, or to be, depends upon your actual state of mind and body. Have you just eaten breakfast? Then you do not crave food. Have you gone without water for a day? Then you are almost crazy for a drink. Have you just quarreled with an old friend? Then you may be in a bitter mood and cannot enjoy anything while the mood lasts. Have you been away in some Arctic wilderness for six months, without even a newspaper to read? Then you may well be wild over almost any kind of a story or play or picture. Are you ten years old, or thirty, or eighty? Are you robust or sickly? Perhaps a powerful emotion, even though momentarily pleasant, may be the one thing you would most emphatically shun. Are you fat? Then you dislike hot weather and strenuous exercise, both in reality and in motion pictures. Do you suffer from hay fever? Then it may be that you loathe a photograph of a hay field and enjoy one of high mountains, which suggest air free of weed pollens.
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